Page 41 of An Offer of Marriage (Engaged to Mr Darcy #7)
She looked far healthier, he thought, her skin no longer pale, her eyes brighter. Was it merely being away from him? Had her nerves abated somewhat? He knew not, but regardless, she was beautiful and he desired her, body and soul.
He watched her as she made a slow perambulation of the room.
“I believe we have Saye to thank for this,” Elizabeth said over her shoulder.
“Saye?”
“He spoke with Miss Bingley at the opera. I believe he wished to distress her a little by ordering her to put us in one bedroom. Had I any idea she would obey him, I would have?—”
“It will do,” Darcy said quickly. Fields and Miss Beauregard still bustled about and, not wishing to alert them to any problem, he said no more.
If either of them had any thought whatsoever about the sleeping arrangements, they were wise enough to make no outward indication of it.
They hurriedly did as they were required to do to settle the master and mistress into the accommodations and then left.
Elizabeth had taken up a position by the window and was gazing outside. Darcy went and stood beside her, looking down on Netherfield’s maze. The recent intelligence he had gained from his sister pricked at him. She believed you were mocking her eyes.
“I remember once?—”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Forgive me, I did not realise you had come up behind me.”
Darcy immediately took a small step away from her and apologised.
“No matter,” she said with a smile. “What was it you meant to say?”
“Only that I remember a time, while Jane was ill at Netherfield, that Miss Bingley and I were walking in the maze and came upon you and Mrs Hurst.”
It seemed to him that she had fixed her gaze rather determinedly on the maze below, but she said nothing.
“I believe you might have heard us speaking before coming upon us?”
She nodded, still looking at the maze. “You were speaking of hanging portraits at Pemberley of my aunt and uncle Philips next to your own uncle, the judge,” she replied in a very matter-of-fact manner. “And my eyes.”
“We ought to have apologised to you at once.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I daresay the subject of my own relations’ humble status in comparison to your own has been canvassed sufficiently.
As for my eyes, I cannot say what is objectionable about them, but so long as I can see clearly out of them, they will do well enough for me.
Shall we go down? I should imagine the others are?—”
He put his hand on her arm to stop her from walking off. “A moment, if you please.”
She looked at the ground and waited for him to continue.
“Nothing is wrong with your eyes. Quite the opposite in fact. In an unguarded moment, I had…I had confided in Miss Bingley about my admiration of them.”
She looked up quickly, those same fine eyes now betraying her shock.
“I had made a remark, at some party or another, about enjoying fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman. She had asked whose eyes I meant, and I said your name. Only much later did I comprehend that she thought I meant to pay her a compliment.”
“Oh no!” Elizabeth let out a giggle, then raised her hand to cover her mouth. “That was…badly done.”
“It was disastrous,” he said. “For you, unfortunately. I think her spitefulness towards you was largely born of that moment. Her treatment of you while you were here, tending your sister, was…inexcusably ill-mannered. Mine was no less.”
“I am sure, when Miss Bingley invited my sister to dine, she had no notion of being drawn into a week-long duty to a sick lady and her sister, the unwanted guest. We intruded upon your party.”
“I assumed, I think, that your good humour throughout meant you were either ignorant of or indifferent to it.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to reply, considered, and closed it again. Then she said, “I learnt, long ago, to respond to slights and mortifications with humour and wit. Growing up as I did…if I were to be injured by all of it, I should be in a sorry state indeed.”
“And thus did you run off from us laughing?—”
“When in truth I was deeply embarrassed and wondering what it was that was so dreadful about my eyes that they could not be painted. Do let us go down?”
“A moment more, if I might? ”
She was still turned towards the door, her back to him. She did not turn round, but she paused and thus he sallied forth. “Your eyes are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen, and indeed I have long considered you the handsomest woman of my acquaintance.”
Elizabeth had a faint grin on her lips when she turned round to look at him. “A handsome woman?”
“You know your beauty has always affected me greatly.”
Her laugh, too loud and sudden, startled them both. Her hand, again, flew up to cover her mouth, and to conceal her giggles until she could say, “We both know that is not true.”
“It is true,” he said urgently. “Elizabeth, I know I set us off on the wrong foot on the first night, the assembly, when I said…when I refused to be introduced, to dance, when I insulted you amid all your friends and relations. I am sorry, so very sorry for doing that.”
She shook her head. “It hardly signifies now, does it?”
“On the contrary. I daresay it signifies a great deal.”
“No, truly, it does not. I suppose you must have had occasion to change your opinion, or at least learn to admire my eyes.”
“I admire everything about you,” he said urgently. “Absolutely everything.”
She raised one hand then to play with her necklace, appearing decidedly uncomfortable by his admission. She offered a quiet thanks and a wry smile before turning back towards the door.
As he followed her down the stairs, watching those charming curls bounce against her neck in a manner that never failed to beguile him, he thought, Who could be surprised that she wished to punish me, to offer me, in her way, these little facers? I had a great deal to be punished for .
For a moment, he was filled with the impulse to touch her shoulder, arrest her forwards motion and say, You know I am still desperately in love with you . Or, I realise now it was all my fault and beg your forgiveness .
But the moment passed as they entered the drawing room to find Bingley and his relations, along with Jane and the rest of the Bennets awaiting them.
Not now , he told himself. But soon. She was owed nothing less than for him to make a cake of himself, to lick her boots, to bow like a debutante in the Queen’s salon.
And he would do it all, if only they could again be set on a right path.